Russian Bill makes Free Software a Public Priority

on: 2016-11-10

Legislators have drafted
a bill
that will boost Free Software on multiple levels within the Russian
Federation's public sector.

The draft, approved by the Russian Federation's Duma (lower chamber)
in mid-October, requires the public sector to prioritise Free Software over
proprietary alternatives, gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer
Free Software for public tenders, and recognises the need to encourage
collaboration with the global network of Free Software organisations and
communities.

The text enforces prioritising Free Software over proprietary alternatives
by requiring public administrations to formally justify any purchase of
proprietary software. The purchase will be considered unjustified if a
Free Software solution exists that satisfies the list of technical specifications
and standards. In addition, all IT purchase agreements in the public
sphere must be registered in a dedicated registrar and detail the overall
quantity and price of both purchased proprietary and Free Software.

In order to encourage local businesses, IT companies that distribute
and provide Free Software products and services will by default receive
bonus points in public tenders. With this measure, legislators intend to
reduce the administration's dependency on foreign IT providers of proprietary
software.

Despite the above, the bill also recognises the universality of Free
Software. As the legislators acknowledge in explanatory notes appended
to the text, the concept of "Russian Free Software" is meaningless due
to the global nature of Free Software. The text recognises the need to
support Russian Free Software companies in order to better integrate into
global Free Software communities.

[...]the draft bill suggests to withhold the concept of "Russian Free
Software", because the source code available under different open licences
represents in essence one global platform[...]

Another interesting aspect of the law is how the authors of the bill
have made an extra effort to ensure the language used in the draft are
correct. For one, only software carrying licenses that allow
the four freedoms
may be legally labelled as "Free Software":

"Free Software - software which is open source and distributed under
open licences based on special licensing contract terms, allowing a user
unrestricted right to install, run, use, study, distribute and modify it
freely, according to one's needs and for purposes that are not restricted
by law."

Secondly, every time the bill text refers to the most famous free operating
system, it refers to it as "GNU/Linux", not simply "Linux". This indicates
an awareness not commonly found amongst authors of national legislations.

"The bill is an example of public software procurement done right." says
Polina Malaja, Policy Analyst and Legal Coordinator at the FSFE. "The FSFE
has long advised having all public administrations prioritise Free Software
and recommended that all software developed by and for the public sector
be published under a Free Software licence. As the authors of the Russian
bill have come to realise, without Free Software public administrations
will never be able to claim they have real digital sovereignty. Other
European administrations should take note."

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About FSFE

Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology.

Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives. It is important
that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software
gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software.
These rights help support other fundamental rights like freedom of
speech, freedom of press and privacy.